Calhoun County Museum
Come and enjoy the history of Calhoun County and South Carolina presented with a personal southern touch.
Begun in 1824 and finished in 1829 by David Houser, the structure served as a tavern and horse-changing station in stagecoach days. An antebellum dutch oven and smokehouse are in the yard.
The slave gallery and the partition once separating the men and women were removed from this structure in 1890. With this exception, the building remains much as it was before the Civil War. A previous meeting house had been erected here on land obtained from Jacob Felkel.
The dwelling is located on land which was developed into a thriving plantation by Ann Heatly, daughter of Captain William Heatly, and her nephew Langdon Cheves. Cheves was a member of the United States House of Representatives in 1810, and president of the Bank of the United States of America. The presently-existing white framed house at Lang Syne was built in 1901. It has a fine entrance with elliptical fanlight. The simple portico has four square columns and a fanlighted pediment. The gable roof is of green tile. The house was formerly the home of writer Louisa Cheves McCord, daughter of Langdon, and also Julia Peterkin, Pulitzer Prize winner.
When John McCord bought the site from John Joyner in 1766, a public ferry came into operation. McCord’s wife Sophianisba Russell McCord was a daughter of Captain Charles Russell. Sophianisba, left at the ferry with her son during the Revolution, instigated and participated in the many troubles that beset the British on their ferry crossings.
This home was named by its builder, Colonel William Russell Thomson, for its location. The site was “Midway” between Bellebroughton, his mother's plantation, and Belleville, his boyhood home. The original home, built about 1780, is now the rear of the structure--the front section was added in the 1850’s when the house was remodeled. At that time, fourteen rooms were removed from the original home and materials salvaged from the alterations were sufficient to build two other homes.
An on-site examination in April of 1972 by the Spartanburg County Historical Association informed “Miss” Nell Reid, then resident of Oakland, that the plantation house was built prior to the Revolutionary War, sometime between 1750 and 1770. Research and investigation of details in the cellar and the attic, or, in other words, the “unfinished” or “uncovered” areas of the house hold strong indications of the dates given above—plus architectural features on the interiors and exteriors on all floors. Also, documents and family tradition bear out these dates.
The large pillars supporting the house are constructed of brick made in the old kiln on the property. The sills are hand-hewn, unbled pine, at least 18 inches wide and extend the length and breadth of the house without piecing. The piazza once extended along the sides. Inside, the rooms have solid pine-board wainscoting, about two feet wide.
Calhoun County Historical Sites (cont.)
McCord’s Ferry Site
Property of Calhoun County Museum Archives.
Not to be used without written consent.
